>> always with you, of course. >> i hear you're going to be off like two weeks. where are you going? >> i am off to lagos, nigeria. for cnn international. don't worry, i'll bring you a present. >> send me an e-mail. >> have a good time in lagos and we look forward to your return. >> larry: tonight, does the brain have a mind of its own? >> the mind is an entity that exists outside of the brain and can exert power. >> larry: making us do and say things we know we shouldn't. >> your brain fools you. >> larry: causing us to eat, drink too much or stay in abusive relationships. >> work on heroin or morphine

centers of the brain. >> larry: is the brain more powerful than any drug or therapy? next on "larry king live." a few notes before we get started. great rundown for you next week. jimmy carter will be here monday night. barbara walters on tuesday. jerry seinfeld next thursday. all in new york. bad behavior, is it all in our heads? we'll talk about it with dr. drew pinsky. the host of celebrity rehab with dr. drew and author of the mirror effect. kara santa maria, researcher. formerly taught at queen's college. dr. daniel amen, psychiatrist and brain imaging specialist, author of "unchain your brain." and finally dr. george pratt,

notable psychologist. author to a code to joy. a body mind approach to calmer, happier, more successful you. first, what's a neuroscience researcher? >> somebody who studies the brain really. neuroscience is a broad term. it can be neurobiology or neuropsychology. i have a mixed background in both. >> larry: do you write or teach or both? >> i have been in the past teaching and doing research while i was working my degrees. education is really the path that i want to take. >> larry: let's get into the overall topic here. the brain. we'll start with you, dr. pinsky. why does the brain not stop us from doing things we know are wrong? >> it would make sense if you have an evolutionary point of view that the brain was a perfect instrument that increased our survivability and only did good things for us. but it is a much messier system in biology than just that.

not just trying to decide why the brain isn't the perfect system in terms of how to operate, how does the brain create the mind? what is the relationship between brain and the mind? >> larry: are they different? >> they are different? >> i kind of think the best way i can communicate to people is music is caused by a bow going across the strings of the violin. >> larry: we're going to break this down in topics by segments. we'll talk about overeating. anybody would know it's wrong to overeat and bad to be fat. why would you overeat? doesn't the brain tell you that's too much? >> not really. in fact as your weight goes up, the actual physical size of your brain goes down. your judgment -- >> larry: you get dumber? >> you get dumber. your reasoning goes down. so being healthy is critical to thinking right but if you've had a brain injury overeating goes up. if you've been eating badly for

a long time, you become addicted to the bad foods, fat, sugar and salt when you put them in certain combinations and work on the heroin or morphine centers of the brain. >> larry: they say to exercise. can you exercise your brain? >> yes, you can. the first thing to do besides taking good care of yourself physically and proper supplementation would be to use various strategies to certain connections and also to remove and release trauma, stress, and those elements that are interfering with your quality of life. >> larry: practical exercises you can do? >> actually there are. when there's an exciting new development in energy psychology which is using the body's energy system to actually the acupuncture system to create changes in the feeling state and

have an effect on the brain. some of the little simple techniques can be learned and practiced in five minutes. >> larry: the more you research, the more imponderable it gets? is the brain a great mystery? >> definitely. i think that what dr. drew was speaking about is really important. a lot of individuals in fields related to neuroscience have been struggling with the question of mind and brain for as far back as we can remember. there are a lot of people that still believe that the mind is an entity that exists outside of the brain and can exert power on the brain. we see changes in research that show that we do have very plastic brains meaning that connections between different cells can sometimes change and we can have new pathways that

are wired based on experience so there's an interesting kind of feedback loop where the brain creates mind and then the mind can exert power on the brain and physically change the structure of the brain. >> larry: can a poor learning brain have a good mind? >> probably. >> thomas edison did terrible in school. got beaten in school. and obviously we would say he had an amazing mind. >> larry: how do we separate them? let's say on obesity. >> mind body dualism goes back. how do we deal with something like obesity where we've been evolutionary. millions of years went into our brain development. we developed in such a way maybe to the age of 20 and take advantage of what the environment had in temperature of surviving. things that were high in calorie and things in fat and sugar and things we craved that we were well rewarded in our brain system. i don't want to get too heady on

you guys. the brain is many different systems. rationale system. award system. emotional system. executive system. the fact is with eating the reward system and euphoric system and for some people that can trigger an addictive process. >> larry: does the stomach tell me i'm hungry or the brain? >> it's your brain that tells you you're hungry. we think of the stomach as your second brain because your intestinal track produces chemicals that work on your brain than the brain itself. your body is really one system. i think of your brain as the super computer that is running everything but it's all interconnected. >> larry: will the brain tell me to overeat? >> sometimes it does if people have damage to certain parts of the brain you can have faulty signals. we discussed a case of a woman who was 490 pounds and then had a lap band and was 280 and she couldn't move lower on the scale with that so they experimented

with deep brain stimulation and running wires to certain parts of the brain to help her to feel a lack of craving and it shows some promise but i would like as a clinical psychologist i think what are the circumstances besides the physiology that are going on that can be affected. >> larry: back to basics, why does the brain do dumb things? >> that's a great question. >> that's a difficult question. i think that we have a lot of -- the brain as dr. drew was saying is messy. evolutionary messy. higher order and higher thinking mammals our executive function can get in the way of our deeper brain processes. we have a lot of cognitive biases and cognitive fallacies that we face every day.

one example would be a fallacy that a lot of people getting back to overeating will experience once they can get their eating in check and they can get their exercise in check and this is the same with addiction. we often times overcompensate and overthink how well we can put ourselves amidst stressors in our life so we'll be around people who are eating rich foods and be around people smoking cigarettes in our presence and study after study show that we definitely don't quite have the control that we think we do. >> larry: will power, does it work? find out after the break. hold . for the next hour, there will be no agenda. marie callender's invites you back to lunch, with a new line of fresh recipes. like chicken teriyaki with crisp water chestnuts. it steams to perfection in minutes, giving the fresh flavors and textures of a homemade meal. marie's new steamed meals. it's time to savor.

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>> larry: i guess one of the definitions of insanity was repeating the same thing and expecting a different result. let's get to overeating. what does the brain expect? >> i want to stop just for a second here at the question you posed before going to break which is does will power work? what you have to understand -- this is disease of addiction that i work with. will power -- the usual systems that we deploy to decide and to affect volition, you start thinking the wrong things.

you start feeling the wrong things are the right things. >> larry: you fool your brain? >> your brain fools you. things like -- my patients all the time get sober but i've been thinking about that guy joe. i have to visit joe. i don't know why. he was a good guy. joe lived next to my crack dealer. the fact is that kind of thinking emerges always in addiction. the systems that we use to rely upon for something we call will actually become at the service of the deeper brain systems to which we are completely helpless. >> larry: since drugs are illegal, is there a criminal mind toward the brain? you know you are doing wrong not only for the addiction but you would even steal it for the addiction. what is the brain doing there? >> one part of the brain we have to talk about when we talk about addiction or will power is the front part of the brain. the front third of the brain largest in humans than any other animal by far. 30% of the human brain.

11% of the chimpanzee brain. 7% of your dog's brain. 3% of your cat's brain. when your prefrontal court exworks right, and the it is not fully developed until we're 25 years old. when it's weak, it's like the supervisor in your head is taking a break and then your inner child who is having tantrums or who wants crack cocaine or wants the third piece of cheesecake, if it is not right, nothing in your life is going to be right. so head injuries matter. low blood sugar matters. you don't eat breakfast, you will make bad decisions about food the rest of the day. if you don't sleep right, lower blood flow to the brain. >> larry: doesn't that defy the fact that when you're 4 years old you know everything about yourself then. >> when we're talking about will power, we have a conscious and subconscious mind.

if we didn't -- it's called different things. freud called it the unconscious. what happens is it's busy doing things for us all the time that we're not taking conscious awareness of because if we did, we would be overloaded with all of the things that are on our minds. cellular reaction. movement of my arm as i'm speaking. if you think when you write a check and you write the first letter, the rest of your name is automatic. when you are walking, it's automatic unless you are climbing very special stairs. this is busy doing this all day long but sometimes you can't get from the subconscious to the conscious mind. we have cognitive therapy as a psychologist. we're taught to change how you think and change how you feel. that goes so far because you cannot think your way out of some of these things. it is not connected. you have to use tools to utilize the subconscious which is very exciting.

the number of neurons firing at the conscious level estimated 40. at the subconscious neuron firing 40 million. >> larry: is the heart in conflict with the brain? like i know this girl is wrong for me. i know that. >> that's a different thing. >> i think this is actually really important because it speaks to what some of the panelists have been saying about the frontal cortex. even in a healthy brain, we have neuron tracks and fibers that connect neurones in other areas of the brain. there are a lot of neuron tracks connecting the system to the pre-frontal cortex. there are almost none connecting it back. that means the deeper emotional self has total control over our executive function.

our conscious being often times cannot handle and cannot control and tell our emotions what to do. we're victims to them. >> or your drives. >> when you talk about -- you were moving into bad relationships now. >> larry: i'm getting there. i don't want to be conflicted or controlled by one topic. the topic is the brain. >> the heart is the body. and i come from a sort of theoretical framework where we don't pay enough attention to the brain/body connection. >> larry: we'll be right back. what about relationships, doesn't it require two brains to interact? how does that work. maybe we'll get answers next. when i brush, i like to do a really mediocre job.

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>> larry: fascinating subject tonight. the brain. pick up where you left off. >> you mentioned about two brains. in terms of solving these problems we were talking about, we left the notion of a single skull system and co-creator frameworks and how brains affect one another. before the break i talked about how i see the mind/body connection so important in that when i'm working with an addict, i don't want to hear what they're saying or thinking because it's distorted.

i sit and just try to atune my body to theirs and see what i understand with empathizing where they are at and reflect that to them and that creates a kind of connection that creates the possibility of changing the wiring of the kinds of systems we're talking about here. >> larry: how, dr. amen, do people change? how does the brain change its behavior for the better? >> we see that all the time at our clinics. we do brain injury. we're in the middle of a big nfl study now. we scanned 105 football players and 103 of them have brain damage. and on the right program, which is getting them to sleep and getting them to lose weight and optimizing their vitamin d level for example, using simple supplements we improved their brains 80% of the time and then their thinking is better and their relationship is better. when your brain works right, that's what i've always said, you work right. when your brain is troubled from

a concussion, from an illness, you're going to have trouble in your life. >> larry: this may sound stupid. what makes one person smarter than another? >> that's an interesting question. i would say what makes one person smarter than another is their ability to adapt and to accept and to determine the course to go with which requires a clear brain to maximize iq you have to be in a certain state where you can perform. we also have eq, emotional quotient which is in some ways more important than iq because it's your ability to maximize intelligence as you relate to others and get things accomplished. >> larry: we know genes could affect -- i could have kidney disease because my mom had it. my grandfather had a heart problem, i get a heart problem. can you inherit brain problems? >> definitely. >> larry: can you be born stupid? i don't mean stupid, you can be born with deficiencies in the brain.

>> you can be born with problems with brain structure, with your neurochemistry that cause diseased states later in life and there are some things than can be changed and some things that are somewhat fixed in the brain. we know that behavioral interventions can give great results because like we were talking about before the ability of the brain to adapt. there are some things that you have to kind of hit in the right developmental period before they get pretty well set. >> larry: can you spot this in a 3 year old? >> i think that we're starting to see that with autism, for example, which used to be diagnosed around age 4 and 5, we can see changes in their brains as early as 1 1/2 years old because they realize that autistic boys generally have much larger brains than non-autistic boys so are there some organic things that can be measured early but often times the behavior has to come out

before someone recognizes the problem. >> larry: can you study a brain, a microscope, tell me something about that person? >> well, with our studies we do a study where i could look at a scan and tell you a lot about that person. whether they will be impulsive or compulsive. >> larry: just looking at the scan? >> just looking at the scan. it's very important. back to your point, my daughter is pregnant. and how her health is during her pregnancy will have a huge impact on that baby and for the baby's rest of life and how smart they are, how adaptable they are. how anxious they are. so taking care of pregnant mothers is just critical. a lot of people don't know they're pregnant until week six and the brain starts to develop at week three. if they're drinking early and they don't know that they're pregnant, it can potentially have a huge impact. >> larry: talk about drug addiction. a puzzling, puzzling problem right after this.

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>> larry: dr. pinsky, there must be a good side to drug addiction or why would so many people take it if they tell you it kills you and you run down to the store to steal it or get it. how does the brain deal with that? why would a bern a brain take cocaine? >> one is why you start using and why you can't stop using.

the starting usually is you are trying to find a solution to a problem and feel better. >> larry: your brain tells you this will work? >> no, the culture tells you this will work. if your brain is genetically set up a certain way, it works. that's what you have to acknowledge in drug addicts. they use drugs because they work. they do feel better. a lot better. for an extended period of time many times and then a second phenomenon kicks in which is the disease of addiction whereby in spite of it no longer working or having serious consequences in their life, i like to call the do it again part of their brain has now been altered in such a way as to require them to do it again, do it again. >> larry: dr. amen, what does the need for the addiction due to the brain. the brain still knows that it is damaging it. >> it damages it over time. >> larry: the brain is damaged? >> yes. so the emotional part of the brain, the pleasure center in the brain hijacks it and it is

damaging your pre-frontal cortex so you have less control. once someone gets clean, it can take months before they begin to feel clear headed. i hate 28-day programs because they haven't really learned anything because their brain is still not clear. >> larry: are there drugs for the brain? >> absolutely. >> larry: to help the brain? >> yes. we have many both natural medicines, fish oil being the one and we have anti-depressants and anti-psychotic medicines and anti-seizure medicine that help people with anxiety and depression. i always say food is your best medicine. we know if you eat a bad diet, you have a higher risk of dementia and depression. >> larry: what does depression do to the brain or does the brain cause the depression?

>> depression is the effect of various factors. what's happening both within a person and their brain obviously and also usually in their environment. depression occurs -- it has an effect on every aspect of a person's life. we all know the standard phenomenon, sleep disruption, appetite disruption, concentration problems, difficulty maintaining relationships and that creates a huge problem for individuals and then families so my job as a clinical psychologist is to help use cognitive and energy and hypnosis tools to go back and find out what the problems are and if you can get them and go back to grief or trauma and you can clear those traumas, you can create a huge effect. >> we see that in the brain. that's the exciting thing. if you do a treatment like hypnosis for people with post-traumatic stress disorder -- i published a study that said we calmed down the emotional structures in the brain.

therapy can help enhance brain function. >> larry: in an autopsy do we discover anything about the brains of suicides? >> suicides -- >> just last week there was a study of a kid that's an nfl player who committed suicide and they found trauma on the surface of the brain. >> right. the chronic -- >> larry: so a concussion could cause you to go over the top? >> i published a study on suicide a couple years ago. what we found, the under side of the prefrontal core text. the most human thoughtful part of the brain in people who killed themselves was really low in activity which means they didn't have a supervisor. i always say suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. >> larry: do you study the brains of drug addicts? >> do i study the brains -- >> i have looked at neuropsychological effects of people that abuse drugs but generally in my research in the past it was with individuals who had sensory disabilities.

blindness, deafness, paralysis and later turned to abusing drugs. this was my field of research when i was younger. i would look -- >> larry: you were younger? >> when i was in my undergrad. i would like at the neuropsychological outcomes doing more behavioral testing using neuro measures. i wasn't looking at their brains but we were trying to make inferences about their behavior. >> larry: do blind people have different type of brains? >> it depends on when the blindness occurred if it was congenital or from an injury later. blindness is a complicated pathway that is both in your eyes and in your brain. >> larry: when we come back, we'll talk about memory.

>> larry: i don't know if this was true. i read that einstein had 14% memory. his brain retained 14%, which made him a genius. is that true? >> einstein's brain was a little bit smaller than the average brain. >> larry: doesn't memory bring genius? the more you remember the smarter you're going to be? >> not necessarily. what brings genius is being able

to look at common things in a different way. and he certainly had that ability. >> larry: do you study memory? >> yeah. that's a big field. memory is important for certain things. really the higher order functions are things like problem solving. that's really more of what dr. amen is referring to. if you solve things in a novel way never thought of before. >> larry: would you go nuts with 20% memory? >> we would have to do a lot of stress management. it would melt our circuits. >> larry: would it be genius though? >> genius is made up of so many different elements. to be optimally functioning you want to utilize all of the tools that you have and that means making sure that you are taking proper care of yourself, your hard drive is clear and again trauma is so powerful in effecting and disrupting memory and most people have a lot of untreated and even unrecognized trauma.

>> this is an important point. in my world i noticed increasingly that trauma is the problem of our time. trauma not meaning physical trauma but interpersonal trauma is emotional abuse at the hands of important caretakers has dramatic effects on the brain and has lots of information about how the brain disregulates and disassociates and now the left brain manages these things versus the right. >> they have determined if you have one trauma there's a permanent 20% elevation in the inflammation in our body and that leads to illness. if you have untreated trauma, you definitely want to get it treated. >> larry: do you study alzheimer's? >> i have in school but i have never done alzheimer's research personally. >> larry: what happens in the brain?

>> new research is always coming about for a while that we thought that it had to do with plaques and tangles but we're starting to see that there is some conflict within the scientific community that maybe not specifically alzheimer's but dementia and some people would say this is a normal function of living a very long life and others would say this is a pathology. >> what we see in brain scans is the back half of the brain in people with alzheimer's disease completely deteriorates. the nfl players, they don't have alzheimer's disease as a group. it's frontal lobe that's damaged. >> larry: what's dementia? >> dementia is the big category. that's where you lose cognitive function that's abnormal for your age. alzheimer's disease is one of the types. the football dementia that we talked about, that's another one of the types. there's blood vessel dementia where you have a stroke.

there's age related dementia. i wrote a book once called "preventing alzheimer's" you prevent the risk factors. obesity is a risk factor for alzheimer's. the more fat on your body, the worst it is. diabetes is a risk factor. depression is a risk factor. alcohol abuse is a risk factor. so really focusing on living a brain healthy life is critical to keeping your memory. >> larry: we'll be right back. care of her children. ae but she needed help. i used my american express open card to get half a million points to buy building materials to help build the jackson family a new home. well, i know if my dad was still around, he would have told me, with no doubt... he would have told me it's a no brainer and i knew that from the start. it was an honor. booming is moving forward by giving back.

>> larry: we're back with our panel in a couple moments. but neurosurgeons from the west virginia health science center are on the front lines of an experimental approach for the treatment of obesity. it targets the brain and not the belly. here to talk about it is dr. julian bailes. normal over surgeon and head of the department of neurosurgery at the university have virginia. what have we discovered? explain what this is, doctor. >> this is inserting electrodes deep in the brain in the part that controls our appetite. our neuro surgeons have spearheaded this fda approved study to see if this possibly would have some benefit for patients with morbid obesity. the most severe forms. the ones where their life expectancy will be affected. >> larry: how does it work? >> electrodes are placed on both sides of the brain. one into the part that makes you

feel full and the other part is the appetite center where your drive to eat is. these electrods have contacts on them. a pacemaker generator is inserted under the skin and we change settings and try to see if we can affect the appetite drive these patients have. >> larry: what have you learned so far? >> we've learned in the first series we've done that the procedure can be done safely. we've learned that we don't think we're having side effects and we can affect the urge to eat and decrease the urge. we're looking at it being well tolerated. the jury is still out. we don't have all of the results yet. we're working to refine the settings to see if we can get the weight loss that we and the patients desire. >> larry: why only very obese people?

>> well, this is the way the study was set up. it's in patients who have failed all medical diets. patients who have failed gastric or stomach bypass surgery. patients who underwent psychiatric evaluation and their life expectancy is significantly reduced if they can't get this morbid obesity under control. >> larry: fascinating. we're going to do a lot more investigations. can i ask you a couple questions about concussions? >> yes, sir. >> larry: west virginia has a prominent football team. major problem in nfl and college football and one of the great baseball stars sat out almost the whole year. what is a concussion and what causes it? >> concussion is either the head gets hit or the head gets moved back and forth violently that the brain moves inside the skull. our brain floats in this bath of fluid. cerebral spinal fluid.

i think that causes a tearing of fibers, rotation of the brain causes tearing of the fibers so the brain is injured. most of the time it recovers. we think in selected cases we're also finding perhaps a genetic predisposition, in selective cases it can accrue and lead to long-term problems in a minority of players. >> larry: could a problem be in the helmet? >> well, the helmets have undergone a lot of changes and improvements and helmet design is important but in my opinion helmets aren't the whole answer. we need to take the motion of the brain inside the skull out of the game. >> larry: in the nfl they fear it may shorten life. can it? >> well, you know, we have autopsied quite a few athletes who have had a shortened life because of this syndrome. again, i support football. i think it's america's greatest sport. we want to make it safer. in certain cases there have been long-term detrimental effects of multiple concussions.

>> larry: fascinating study. chairman of the department at the university school of medicine. back with our panel after this. >> a very nice place. now nobody can go out. >> this moment of crisis, people have to have a secure place where healing goes on. my name is guadalupe. i started the hospital in downtown juarez. we have been working there for 37 years with the community. every day we had from 800 to 1,000 people. some of them can pay. some of them cannot pay. but we don't turn anybody away.

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>> larry: back with our panel, dr. drew pinsky, cara, dr. daniel amen, psychologist and brain image specialist and psychologist dr. george pratt. what did you make of that study about the obesity study at west virginia. >> i think it's very interesting. and psychiatry and neurosurgeons are starting to work together again and planting these electrodes in the brain using imaging for things like resistant depression. for obsessive compulsive disorder and now for people who are morbidly obese. it's exciting, and going to be much better than the psycho surgery, you know in the 1940s

and '50s. >> what do you think, cara? >> i think it's really interesting. and i think where probably the research is limited is the problem of knowing why certain people eat or certain people abuse drugs. we like to put them all under an umbrella of, there's something wrong with their dopamine system or these people specifically don't get enough neurotransmitter that tells them they're full or their stomach is not telling them the right signals. but, you know, everybody's pathology is very different. and until i think that we can accurately diagnose why people have these addictive behaviors, it's going to be difficult because we're going to be working with a one size fits all treatment. >> let me say, cara, as a follow-on to that. i deal with a lot of people that end up losing all the weight and they're not right emotionally after they lose the weight. there's all kinds of reasons the weight was there and those things have often not been dealt with. >> don't they become more addicted when you have gastric

bypass? >> the problem with alcoholism goes way up. the way the alcohol gets to the brain is much different. we see lots of bypass patients -- >> challenges even with depression. even when you lose 100 pounds and you think they'd really be doing well. >> absolutely. >> larry: we have a facebook question posted on our facebook page. where else would it come? do we know that part of the brain causes obsessive compulsive behavior? >> there's a lot of imaging work with obsessive compulsive. the prefrontal cortex, we've been talking about this. rather than being low, which we see in impulsive disorders, the prefrontal cortex works too hard with people with ocd. we call it hyperfrontality. some of the medicines or therapies we use actually calm down the prefrontal cortex so people don't think about things over and over again. >> we posted to the larry king facebook page asking for questions for this show on the brain. we've got a lot. don't have time to get them all in. 12 years ago, i got into an

accident in the snow. i don't drive in the snow anymore. i am a terrified passenger if it's snowing. i become paralyzed. i cry. i know it's irrational. what's going on with my brain, cara? do you know? >> yeah, or it sounds like it could be a post-traumatic stress disorder. >> larry: what is post-traumatic stress. something happens to you and -- >> and you experience hypervigilance, heightened levels of stress and you actually have behaviors in your life that are so difficult that they, you know, they make your life difficult to navigate after that. we see it obviously in war time. we see it after trauma, after abuse, after rape, and after things like car accidents. >> larry: we didn't hear it, though, until vietnam. never heard it after world war ii. >> it was shell shock. different sayings. >> one thing about this case, ptsd can create all of those symptoms. as well as triggering panic attacks and you have one trial learning when you are in a situation that's highly negative.

and you imprint on that and then you have a problem driving in snow because you have an association. >> larry: how do you get rid of it? >> the desensitization methods. it's actually quite easy to get rid of. >> this is how the brain works. it locks things in. parts of the brain wall off. to be healthy, we have to integrate as a whole. but traumas lock off parts from the part of the brain that conscious. >> even with scans with people with ptsd, the prefrontal cortex inactive and the limbic system is overdriven. we can see direct correlations of what these methods can do to desensitize people. these people can be healed. ♪ >> larry: we'll be back with our remaining moments. don't go away. bank of america lends billions of dollars, to individuals, institutions, schools, organizations and businesses. ♪ working to set opportunity in motion.

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>> larry: only have a few minutes left. i don't get personal on this show but i'll tell a true quick story. i had heart surgery. i'm in new york, in bed, post surgery. my doctor, on the front cover of the "new york times" magazine. into the room comes a man. he says he's a brain surgeon at the hospital. he says i don't mind dr. isom. i like him. he's a great guy. he's getting all this attention. but heart surgeons are plumbers. they do plumbing. i'm a brain surgeon. one move of my little hand can change your memory forever. i have to be so delicate and yet, with all of this, nobody knows me. and i said, of course the song ain't "i left my brain in san francisco." now the story is true. that happened. but the heart does command us,

doesn't it? the heart wins. >> the body. >> the brain tells the heart what to do. >> the brain wins. >> the brain and the heart working together. >> the heart has to work or the brain -- >> larry: if you are in a malfunctioning relationship, the heart doesn't -- >> i know what you are saying. we're all know our terminology here. the fact is what your saying, when we have a deep drive and a desire to be with somebody, that's what we're going to do. >> larry: i can't talk you out of love, can i? >> no. >> i love you with all my brain. saying i love you with all my heart doesn't work from a neuroscience perspective. >> larry: can you talk someone out of a relationship? >> not using the literal mind. if someone is suffering from love pain or anguish, these methods work. >> larry: cara, why did you decide to make a career of this? >> it's the only option i feel like i had. when i first started school, it's the only -- >> larry: had to be the brain? >> it was the only thing i found. it's the most interesting thing. >> larry: was your father into this? >> no. my mother is an educator. my father an engineer.

i had to. i started in music and then i went into psychology. and as i was studying psychology and philosophy i realized i needed to know more about the organic basis of these things. just grew from there. >> larry: we only have a minute. what fascinates you the most about the brain. >> exactly what she's talking about. all these different fields, anthropology, psychology, philosophy are all coming together under the rubric of neuroscience. >> larry: what about you? >> neuroplasticity. how the brain can rewire and change itself. dr. chandra had amputees with phantom limb pain. they had been taking lots of medication. he developed a mirror. he'd insert one hand, the intact arm. the person would see the other arm as intact and repaired the brain within minutes. i love neuroplasticity. >> i think of the brain as the hardware of the soul. who you are has to do with the physical funni